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Overview

Introduction​

Signadot is a Kubernetes-native platform that accelerates microservices development by providing high-fidelity environments for development, testing, and validation. It enables teams to catch issues early by testing changes against real dependencies and data, directly in Kubernetes.

Signadot Shifts Integration Testing Left

Core Capabilities​

Developer Environments​

  • Local Development: Test changes from your workstation against real dependencies in shared environments without building images or pushing code
  • Pull Request Previews: Create isolated environments for each PR to catch issues during code review with real dependencies

Test Environments​

  • Integration & E2E Testing: Run integration / end-to-end tests on real services during development and on every PR to catch integration issues early

Smart Tests​

  • Contract Testing: Zero-maintenance API validation using Smart Diff, with optional explicit checks
  • API Validation: Basic health monitoring and invariant checks through synthetic API tests in the UI

How It Works​

Signadot installs into your Kubernetes cluster and connects to a remote control plane. It creates isolated sandboxes within shared clusters through several isolation mechanisms.

Request routing is handled either by the built-in devmesh for simple HTTP/gRPC traffic, or through service mesh integration (Istio, Linkerd) for advanced use cases. Both approaches use standard header propagation protocols like OpenTelemetry or B3 to split traffic between sandbox and baseline environments.

For asynchronous workflows, Signadot provides message queue isolation through libraries supporting Kafka, RabbitMQ, and other message queues. These libraries create sandbox-specific topics and queues, maintaining message ordering while automatically cleaning up resources when sandboxes are deleted.

Data isolation is achieved through resource plugins for databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL. These plugins create temporary schemas or databases for sandboxes with minimal overhead, enabling proper isolation of data changes while maintaining efficiency in shared resources.

This architecture is similar to systems like SLATE at Uber and Staging Overrides at Lyft.

Key Benefits​

  1. Resource Efficiency: Signadot creates lightweight sandboxes that share a single Kubernetes cluster. By sharing resources across sandboxes instead of duplicating entire environments, it dramatically reduces infrastructure costs and operational overhead.

  2. Shift-Left Testing: Teams run integration, end-to-end, and contract tests during development. Contract testing with Smart Diff provides zero-maintenance API validation. This enables early issue detection and faster feedback cycles when changes are cheapest to fix.

  3. Developer Experience: A unified platform for development and testing eliminates juggling multiple tools. Developers use consistent workflows whether running local changes, creating PR previews, or executing tests.

  4. High-Fidelity Environments: Teams test against production-grade data and real dependencies without mocks. Isolated sandboxes in shared environments enable safe testing without disrupting others.

Getting Started​

For detailed architecture and concepts, see our technical documentation.